Kazakhstan competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. It was the nation's sixth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics in the post-Soviet era. The National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan fielded a roster of 104 athletes, 55 men and 49 women, to compete across seventeen different sports at these Games, the smallest Summer Olympic team since the nation's debut in Atlanta 1996. Moreover, Kazakhstan did not send teams in any of the team sports for the first time in twenty years. Track and field accounted for the largest number of athletes on the Kazakh squad, with 25 entries. There was a single competitor each in slalom canoeing, track cycling, fencing, and table tennis (for the first time after an eight-year absence).
Four of the nation's Olympic medalists from London 2012 returned, defending triple jump champion Olga Rypakova, Russian-born wrestling veteran Guzel Manyurova, and boxers Adilbek Niyazymbetov (light heavyweight) and Ivan Dychko (super heavyweight). Triple jumper and 2006 Asian Games runner-up Roman Valiyev was the most experience Kazakh athlete, participating in his fourth Games. Along with Rypakova and Manyurova, six more athletes also made their third Olympic appearance, including boxing quarterfinalist Birzhan Zhakypov in the men's light flyweight division, and sprint kayaker Natalya Sergeyeva (aged 40), the oldest athlete of the roster. Heavyweight taekwondo fighter Ruslan Zhaparov was nominated by the committee to carry the Kazakh flag at the opening ceremony.
Kazakhstan returned home from Rio de Janeiro with 18 medals (three golds, five silver, and ten bronze), marking its most successful outcome in Summer Olympic history. As expected, most of the medals were distributed to the Kazakh athletes in both boxing and weightlifting, including a gold each from Youth Olympian Nijat Rahimov (men's 77 kg) and welterweight boxer Daniyar Yeleussinov. The remaining gold medal, however, went to swimmer Dmitriy Balandin, who surprisingly outlasted the favorites from the outside in the men's 200 m breaststroke to hand the Kazakhs their historic first Olympic swimming title.
Apart from the winners, other medalists also included fellow boxers Niyazymbetov and Dychko, who managed to repeat their London 2012 feats in their respective weight divisions; Rypakova, who scored another medal with a bronze in the women's triple jump, bowing out of her title defense to Colombia's Caterine Ibargüen; Manyurova, who wrestled her way towards a runner-up finish in the women's 75 kg, adding a silver to her career hardware of three medals; and weightlifter Denis Ulanov, who received the bronze in the men's 85 kg, following the disqualification of Romania's Gabriel Sîncrăian over a doping offense.
Medalists
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Competitors
The following is the list of number of competitors participating in the Games:
Archery
Two Kazakh archers qualified each for both the men's and women's individual recurve by obtaining one of the three Olympic places available from the 2015 Asian Archery Championships in Bangkok, Thailand.
Athletics
Kazakh athletes have so far achieved qualifying standards in the following athletics events (up to a maximum of 3 athletes in each event):
Track & road events
Men
Women
Field events
Men
Women
Boxing
Kazakhstan has entered twelve boxers (10 men and 2 women) to compete in each of the following weight classes into the Olympic boxing tournament. Berik Abdrakhmanov and two-time Olympian Birzhan Zhakypov were the first Kazakhs to be selected to the Olympic team with a top two finish in the AIBA Pro Boxing series, while Vasiliy Levit did so in the World Series of Boxing.
2012 Olympian Daniyar Yeleussinov was the only Kazakh boxer qualifying through the 2015 World Championships. Meanwhile, seven further boxers (Yeraliyev, Sattibayev, Zhussupov, Alimkhanuly, Niyazymbetov, Dychko, and Shakimova) had claimed their Olympic spots at the 2016 Asia & Oceania Qualification Tournament in Qian'an, China.
Zhaina Shekerbekova rounded out the Kazakh boxing roster with a quarterfinal victory in women's flyweight division at the World Championships in Astana.
Men
Women
Canoeing
Slalom
Kazakh canoeists have qualified a maximum of one boat in each of the following classes through the 2015 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships and the 2016 Asian Championships.